Before and After
by Melizabeth-Is-Kismet
Summary: He loved her with his entire soul, but the curse took that all away. Now all he has left is his promise. A drabble based on the most recent chapter of NNT, 248.


**I don't own the characters of The Seven Deadly Sins/Nanatsu no Taizai.**

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This room, nearly at the top of Camelot's castle, is immaculate—filled with posh furniture, depictions of goddesses and demons carved into relief upon the roof, and the floor scrubbed so clean I can see the harsh set of my features reflecting back at me and the flat crimson of my eyes boring holes into my being. But most importantly, this separates us from everyone else. I don't move from my slumped almost defeated posture at the sound of Elizabeth's rattled breaths, knowing that she is filled with the harsh sting of hurt and uncertainty. But I'm unwilling to look up and see it upon her face for the moment as I sift through my memories and paint the image for myself of the wide set of her eyes, the strangling grip of her fists near her chest, and the liquid blue of her eyes and find myself wishing not for the first time it coaxed some response from me.

But I'm just as hollowed out as a log over a stream, and my posture dips downwards another inch as a result.

"Please… Meliodas, rethink this! You can't do this... You can't become the Demon King!" Elizabeth's voice rings around the room heavy with urgency and pitched with certainty as she practically begs me to look up and see it within her eyes.

I breathe in as I slowly grip tighter to the resolve of a promise I made to her when I was someone I can no longer be, someone who's memories invade my mind like a blessing and a curse. "This is the only means I have left. Please understand, Elizabeth," my voice stretches outwards low and even, the only way I can think of to address her as I finally look up and witness the pain etched into her expression exactly as I'd predicted before. " _I will break this curse, no matter what it takes._ That was the promise I made to you…"

There's a beat that passes between us where her lips thin and the amber of the flames mounted upon the walls flickers. The desperation in those eyes should make me curl inwards in regret as I find some way to ease her worries and work towards a compromise. Instead I curl my fingers and look at it as her refusal to see reason.

"But I'm not scared of dying. Rather what I'm of is being reincarnated and forgetting all my memories. I'm scared of about forgetting Father and my older sister… about Hawk, Diane, and Elaine… and about all of the Seven Deadly Sins." Her chest quivers as she soldiers on attempting to sway me with the honest tones that would drive me to do just about anything if only to see her smile. "But the thing I'm most scared of is that I might never see you again."

Her lovely voice does nothing but drive my gaze back down to stare at my impassive expression.

I hear the catch of her breath in her slim throat before her words harden against a momentary break in her composure. "If you break this curse, you might be able to save me, but I might also lose my memory… Besides, you of all people must know what would happen if you became Demon King, right?!"

Her words settle in the air between us like an experiment gone wrong, seconds from blowing. While I'm not disturbed in the slightest, I can still hear her panicked breaths and the tick of her rapid pulse. I need to keep her safe from all harm and right now she's working herself up needlessly. Memories try to contradict me and show me why she might have a reason to _feel_ as if I'm making a terrible mistake. But they're from _him_ —the one with green eyes, cheek splitting grins, and a devotion above all else to her—and they're in shades of grey, riddled with follies. There's a reason why 107 Elizabeths have come to be and I will make sure, with clean cut reason, this curse is broken so this one will be the last.

"The Demon King's power is great. Which means I will most likely not be able to stay in this world, Britannia, anymore…" I agree with her before she cuts in blinded by emotion.

 _"_ _Then what point would breaking this curse have?! I don't want this! I don't want to live in a world without you…!"_

"You don't need to worry about that," I state quietly after the resonance of her outburst has settled and I can be sure her words have left no effect upon me no matter how much I know they should. "Every time you're reborn through your mother, the Supreme Goddess' cures, you will have your love for me imprinted onto you. Once the curse is broken, then all those feelings… will be wiped clean as well… So you don't need to worry," I tell her as gently as I can through the harsh scowl that glares back at me. The fire of my eyes are dull embers as I wait for her to grasp this and see what I should have thousands of years ago when _he_ was locked in a cycle of desperation, heartbreak, and that damned promise.

"...Are you seriously saying that? That though you love me, my feelings for you have been manufactured by someone else…?" I can practically hear the disbelief clog her throat, the despair twist her lungs as she places each word carefully for fear she might trip up and fall onto one side of the spectrum or the other. Violent screams or harrowing sobs.

I know I'm approaching a delicate subject. _Delicate_ not even being able to really describe the matter at hand. We both hold memories that overlap, memories that carry a love that most can only dream of obtaining. I saw things in black and white back then with a blaze of wrath when needed. And then a goddess of silvery tones, shy smiles, sweet scents, and eyes brighter than any summer day graced my life. We were both goners. It was inevitable. My love went on to remain true, while hers was implanted the moment she drew her first breath. "If not then it would be impossible, wouldn't it…? For you to only love me every single time that you're reborn…"

It's the only logical explanation. There's no way someone as beautiful and enchanting as Elizabeth could _only_ hold adoration for someone like me. I clench my jaw against the inane knowledge that I have done the same thing. At least until…

 _"_ _Then why?!"_ The patter of the teardrop upon the gleaming floor reverberates in my ears far longer than the pitch of her cry. "Instead of trying to save me, you should have just let me be! After all, I'd just forget everything after I was reborn anyways! So then you could have just lived your life falling in love with someone else!"

Anguish twisted into words meant to pierce, words meant to crack through the stone that's long since encased me and jab at my weak interior that no longer exists as they taper off into shaken sniffles. And in a way she reaches me, drawing my eyes up to her figure hunched into herself as she struggles not to cry any further. The scrunch of her eyes and the flush of her cheeks and nose as her lips tremble are all wrong, all signs that my words haven't unfurled properly in her mind. I'm still not making sense to her. I'm keeping her promise. Why can't she see that I'm doing the only thing that I can?

Exhaling calmly as I push to my feet I let the flames draped like cloth over my frame gradually dissipate like a passing summer's breeze. "I can't help it," I tell her as the magic within tingles and pops under my flesh receding until I stand before her clad in nothing but pale skin.

Her head snaps up eyebrows drawn down as her eyes hone into mine like iced flames. "What can't you help…?" I can tell the moment she notices the changes within me, _the green of my eyes,_ as she draws up short like she doesn't dare to hope. But the conviction is there, sprouting in her eyes like flowers in spring.

I know what I'm doing as I tug on her heartstrings. She's calmer, happier, and hopefully more willing to swallowing the harsh truth, as I form the familiar bright sunny grin and tell her soothingly, "Whatever you it is… whether you were a goddess… or whether you were Princess of Liones… I love all of you..."

She doesn't wait for me to finish, the urge to reach me abundant in the way she dashes into my body and tangles her arms around my shoulders. It's a familiar hold where her hair tickles my cheek and her cheek warms my neck while I place my hands on her waist. Her scent wafts through my nose fluffy and sweet quirking my lips up through sheer muscle memory. From the outside everything is perfectly the same from the warmth shared between us to the tears leaking across my shoulder, but on the inside… I stare blankly ahead as I experience the differences within while Elizabeth sobs her joy into my skin.

"I know for sure too! That all 106 Elizabeth and me as the Princess of Liones… Every time, I fell in love with you through my own will…! Meliodas… there's still time. Why don't we try to figure out some other way with the Seven Deadly Sins?"

I wrap my arms around her ignoring her words as my eyes slip shut. Her skin beneath my fingers is smooth and soft, warm and precious as she nuzzles closer. Caged between us is the frantic beats of a hummingbird's wings and for a moment I think I do smile, relishing how happy I've made her, savoring this single instant as best as I can. But then it flickers away as I exhale and I can think of only sharing the truth with her. "I'd always loved you so much that I could hardly handle it… Every time I'd touch you like this, my hearts would beat like crazy… I could do nothing to stop it…"

Like a snap across the sky in the worst of storms my power surges forth, flames curled back in place and crimson obscuring any signs of emerald that once gleamed as I open my eyes to stare impassively ahead. My hold grows as stiff as branches in the dead of winter while my words drive home what I've been attempting to say all along. "And yet now, I feel nothing." I _am_ nothing on the inside and have been slowly edging towards this conclusion for a long time, since that night in the ruins of the original Boar Hat… I knew then what I would become, what I had to become and I feared it, feared how I grew colder, icier in between my ribs little by little each and every day. My frequent smiles, banter with our friends, and long nights spent gazing somberly at Elizabeth's sleeping figure hid things well. But as I capture her hand and press it to my chest, palms flat, so that the steady thrum in my chest is not mistaken to either of us, it can't be hidden any longer.

The waver in her eyes is worse than turbulent waves as she stares at her palm, before her gaze locks on mine with a strained breath that cracks across the otherwise silent room. Her hands dart to my shoulders, nails digging into my skin as quakes overtake her as if a blizzard has blown into the room. Her pupils are practically pin tips in size as I watch horror still her words and the beginnings of heartbreak pale her skin with only the wish for her to understand me rising forth. "So please understand, Elizabeth. The only thing I have left… is the promise I made to you…"

Her eyes finally steady on me as tears drip down her cheeks and I can see something building behind her gaze, hard as steel as her jaw sets. "...I see. In that case, I've got a plan as well." Her voice holds not a single tremble as she draws her hands back and fists them at her sides, causing me pause as I attempt to study her motives. "I'm going to work together with the Seven Deadly Sins and use all of my strength to stop you from becoming Demon King!"

My gaze narrows at the idea of her straying from my sight when people like Chandler and _Estarossa_ , and countless others are out there more than posing a threat to her life. Especially when she only has less than three days left… My hand shoots out to grasp her wrist chaining her to me in the only way I can think of as I grit out, "Stop this foolishness!"

Elizabeth recoils, her face pinched in a way my memories have seen many a time but rarely with _him_ , before crying out from the disturbed contortions of her gut, "Let go of me!"

The slap of flesh against flesh is fast and quick, something I didn't see coming as my guard is always lowered for her. My eyes trail from her hand still raised to the firm set of her expression as she breathes harshly through her nose. She's not sorry nor does she plan on going back on her ideas.

Neither do I.

"...If hitting me will make you feel better, than hit me." I offer with no edge to my words, utterly serious. I will take whatever abuse she has to dish out so long as she stays here with me so that I can set her free.

She merely utters a sole word at my idea as her eyebrows lower into something akin to sorrow. "Idiot."

It happens faster than I can detect, the crackle of magic so powerful in the air enough to suck the oxygen from the room in an instant. My eyes only have a second to gaze at the blinding orb of Ark, twinkling dazzlingly above her raised hand, before it's slammed into me. My hand slips from her wrist as my body flies through the air, my nose already picking up the acrid tinge of burning flesh and blood before I even hit the ground. Glass shatters all around me, tinkling in my ears as I smash through a vanity before landing prone on the ground. I've felt far worse pain lance through my bones and rattle my teeth on more than one occasion, so I know more than anything I'm frozen in pure shock staring up at the depictions upon the ceiling, feeling Elizabeth's presence become further and further away.

I shouldn't be surprised by the turn of events. The daughter of the Supreme Goddess is more than capable of handling her own if I recall from battles fought alongside her and even before, against her. But that thought isn't quite right as I push to sit up in the bits of glass that prick my skin and splintered wood. That was Elizabeth Liones, the girl who sacrificed herself to Hendrickson, who healed the Kingdom of all its wounds, who fought alongside Elaine in the fight festival and won, who ran the Boar Hat for three months when the Ten Commandments threatened to take over the lands, and countless other things that make her a force to be reckoned with.

I should've never underestimated my princess who I remember loving with everything I have, but who I can now only hope to fulfill a promise to.

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 **It was difficult trying to write this (especially with these moments being a punch in the gut) but I do hope it was enjoyable to read nonetheless. I simply wanted to try and get into the mind of Meliodas during this time and I hope I did a decent job. Thank you for reading.**


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